Chicken Update

It looks like winter is losing it's steam.  That means that the two rejected chickens that I took for goners in December are actually going to make it another year.  They've earned the right to stick around after surviving this winter, no freeze packed chicken heaven for them. 

I just have no idea how long they'll be sticking around.  You can find all the information you'd ever need on Guinea Hens, even recipes, but you can never find a natural life expectancy; apparently no one lets them live that long.  So they've become my very own experiment.

With the return of a few bugs the Hens have been getting up earlier, actually having a reason to now.  They spend more time around here before retreating to the safety of the neighbor's bird feeder.  They stay out later in the evening, and they're much chattier at night, probably because their beaks are no longer frozen together.  In the deathly cold they came home for the night around 4:00 and slept as close to one another as they could without getting mushy over it.  Now they don't come home until closer to 6:30.

But last night they didn't come home.

Leave it to my stupid birds to pick the return of Spring as the time when they cave and give up their fight against the cold.

And how pathetic am I?  I actually worried about them last night.  I had to remind myself that I actually told them to freeze to death, out loud, just a few months ago.  And yet here I was, not overly concerned of course, but still wondering what they were doing.  Where were they sleeping?  Are they dry and warm?

What am I thinking?  Honestly, I'm not that attached to them.  I didn't even give them proper chicken food all winter, I left them to tough it out and manage on their own.  But now they go and really prove that they don't need me, and I get all sentimental.

My fears assuaged, they've been honking all day.

Relief, guilt, and annoyance sweep over me.  Yep, they've really made it.